For decades, the rational response to any “What compact car should I buy?” question has unequivocally been “Civic or Corolla”. With Honda seemingly in the weeds during the last generation Civic’s development, that leaves the Corolla as the de facto answer when someone asks you for sensible consumer advice. There’s a new one out now, and I’ve driven it.

You could be forgiven for thinking it’s a bit late in the Lexus RX’s model life cycle for us to review it; after all, these pages are usually devoted to freshly restyled or all-new metal. But in fact, though this platform’s basic bones stretch back to the 2010 model year, the RX received a heavy refresh for 2013 that brought it right up to date against others in the entry-level luxury crossover segment. We’ve covered the normal RX350 before on these pages, but never the full-zoot RX450h hybrid version. What makes this CUV a perennial class sales leader? Read on for a look. Read More

We at Speed:Sport:Life are fans of the pickup truck. This is a good thing, because we seem to find ourselves behind the wheels of them quite often. Our keys of the week belong to the Tundra CrewMax Platinum edition.

I’ve admitted on these pages before to not being the World’s Greatest Hybrid Fan. Yeah, I can see their purpose, and although their net impact on global sustainability remains questionable and hotly debated, I do at least understand that a reduced dependence on fossil fuels is a goal we should all be working toward. If in the near term we accomplish that by building vehicles with battery packs that greatly reduce fuel consumption, so be it. But that still hasn’t burnished a place in my heart for the Prius as a vehicle I would recommend to my friends when they ask me, the car guy in their lives, for advice.

Toyota’s midsize sedans recall the old German automaker mantra of “one sausage – three lengths” – in that the platform that underpins the Camry, Avalon and Lexus ES350 makes them all essentially the same underneath, but they wear vastly different sheetmetal and appeal to different buyers. You might think I’m stretching the metaphor a bit, but hear me out: all of these cars are remarkably similar under the skin, and yet they drive, feel and look completely different. So maybe it’s not a take on the German mantra, but a Japanese one – one sushi roll, three lengths.

It’s not often I find myself daydreaming of rising to political prominence in a third-world banana republic somewhere; in fact, that’s never run through my mind. But after a few days of rolling around in a Lexus LX570 (aka the “Lexus Land Cruiser”), mindsets tend to change.